Divine Sealing (Genesis) review

"Sometimes, when I get a boner, I thrust my hands down into my pants to make it go away."

Sometimes, when I get a boner, I thrust my hands down into my pants to make it go away. Now, this boner doesn't just magically appear out of nowhere, it normally shows itself when an event happens, like when I go on this thing called the "interweb" and view "construction sites" showcasing naked women doing something "hot and heavy". It's only then that the erected foe shows itself, forcing me yet again into a fight for control of my body. Recently, I said to myself out loud, within hearing distance of other people, "Mr. PickHut, can there be some other way to vanquish this boner into the depths of purgatory?!", while shaking my fists into the air. That's when it hit me: I remember hearing about this Mega Drive title called Divine Sealing, a shoot-em-up that also shows pixelated, softcore pornography. Maybe, just maybe, viewing softcore images while playing a video game will tame this wild beast. So, I went on my merry way home, "obtained" DS, and began my journey of a possible, bonerless life.

After passing the title screen with its upbeat, J-Popish music, I was treated to a cutscene of a computer display. There was Japanese text at the bottom I could not even understand, so I kept hitting the button to pass it. There was a lot of Japanese text... Obviously, I was overjoyed once the screen began fading to black, since I thought the game would finally start. Instead, the next image that appeared was that of a blue-haired woman, who looked like she was trying to imitate a peacock with the getup she was wearing. My first erection test! With my left hand ready to dive into my pants at a moment's notice, I pressed the button again to see what would happen. More text. I continued pressing forward, thinking maybe something interesting might happen in this sea of words. Nothing. After all that nonsense ended, the first stage finally booted up, where I thought I would at least get some good shooting action out of this horizontal shmup.

Unfortunately, it was not meant to be. It ended up being one of the most boring things I've had to sit through. I had the ability, like every other shoot-em-up, to navigate my ship all over the screen, but with enemies this easy, why should I bother? Giant bees and weird, mutated potatoes would fall from the top of the screen in slow patterns, waiting for me to move left or right to destroy them. And since not one of them even bothered shooting at me, I wasn't in any danger of being destroyed. Hell, I could stare at something else with the game barely in my view and still be able to dodge anything that came my way. The boss of the stage, a giant, green robot, only provided me with a half-baked challenge. Its movement pattern was extremely limited, normally just diving down, then up again, with an occasional move to the left. Even with bullets flying all over the screen, there wasn't much of a threat, since they moved pretty slow. You could destroy the boss in about a minute without much of a problem, which was still too long for me.

However, when the stage ended, the screen went back to the peacock woman, who attacked me with more text. Suddenly, the screen switched to a different image of the woman, one where she's partially naked! Again, I readied myself for another possible lift-off, and continued cutting through the mountains of text. The next picture finally materialized, and I saw more skin. Boobs! Though, there was no excitement to be had, since the woman looked like she was in pain. Upon further viewing of the rest of the images, it pretty much looked like she was being raped, supposedly by your character. This was not bonerific at all.

But, I continued on with the game, where I endured another stage, this one taking place in a cave with a boring purple/blue backdrop. It was slightly more of a challenge than the first stage, since, well, you actually had to put some effort into dodging certain enemies. Though, any attempt at using skill in the stage was destroyed when I received my second extra life from blowing up all these objects. See, whenever you get an extra life, you also get an upgrade for your ship. So, by this time, my ship was pretty much shooting in all directions, destroying anything that came in its path. The boss, which took the form of a red, robotic dildo, was already easy to begin with, but with this power boost, it was just pathetic.

I was then again treated to another text-heavy rape scene, this time with a different woman. And again, it was not a rock-hard moment. The next stage, the third, was just downright sad, since it was as easy as the rest, but it also included NES-style backdrops of oceans and land. The fourth stage, however, was the complete opposite in terms of difficulty. It was tough, but for the wrong reason. About 95% of the background was lava. Flashing, red lava. This made things hard (not that kind of hard), because you couldn't really make out half of the objects that appeared on screen due to the damn effect. This includes bullets. You'll die a lot in this stage. If you have a high life count, you should be able to make it through the level just fine, but if you don't, you're gonna restart the stage over and over again...

As I was playing through this crappy game, I realized something: I wasn't getting erected at all. Alas, with the help of its boring and stupid gameplay, text-heavy cutscenes, and the theme of rape, not once did I sprout a rocketship in my pants. I was gonna give the game a 1, but since it helped in the process of destroying my boner, I give it a 2. Thank you, Divine Sealing!

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bluberry posted July 24, 2008:

ironically, this review gave me a boner

pickhut posted July 24, 2008:

That's good to know.

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